Correspondence: Frances Davis Cummins -> T.H. Valley Sr.

Dear Mr. Thomas H Valley

I may be doing a very foolish thing in lending you 20 pages of my almost completed book. To a man I have never seen or heard of and I am trusting you will return it as soon as you make copies if it will help you. And gladly welcome you if you can give me the kind of historical background I am demanding of myself.

You see I live in a “nursing home”, not a “retirement home” where I get excellent care and enjoy being 6 miles west of the City with lovely trees and fresh air. One wing is for the bedridden and the other where I live we must be able to still care for ourselves. Almost everyone uses a “walker” or “wheel chair”. I am lucky and do not yet, but I have no way of using any kind of copier or I would not have sent you my only pages of the material you will be interested in. Please take good care of these and return them as soon as possible.

There are two other families of Cummings new here and one claiming an Irish background. We have compared notes but find no connections. Our family had noted Anglican clergy. Scharf’s History of Delaware has a biographical account of the family but has evidently written it from hearsay and guesswork. He says they come from “Red” John Comyn of Badenoch, etc.

When I was able to acquire the book “The Bruce & the Comyn” written by a Mrs. Bruce long ago & with a wonderful Genealogical Chart I discovered it couldsn’t happen as he left no sons! But when I studied it more closely by following the lindeage several hundred years later I found that one of his daughters had married the son of another branch of the Cummins family and through their children could be. Since I already had several lines of Royal descent I have never followed it up. This, of course is the Scottish side. But if you are prepared to spend several thousand dollars to trace it perhaps Mr. Pine would be willing to take it up, although he is retired?

Genealogy is a “science” and one that requires patience and lots of research with legal proof to be worth the paper it is published on. I have spent 30 years gathering my information with positive proof or saying “this has not been proved” as a clue for further study.

Let me make it clear to you that my book will be called The Cummins Family of Kent County Delaware, 1731-1979. All Family Trees have many and far reaching roots. There are three Cummins families I know of in Delaware and none are of direct descent as far as I know. Already I have 220 plus pages and find I am having to prune some branches more than I would like to do to keep it within a single volume.

Also this covers what we know about Timothy through my husband’s tenth generation and that covers completely our branch of more wide spread family. Our son, John Raymond Cummins and his first cousin, James Dirickson Cummins are the last to bear the name. Both are married but neither have a son to carry on the name. Ours has two adopted children (son & daughter) but no child unless a “blood kin” can go on a family tree except listed as “adopted” and completes that branch of the family.

Many people have aided me in my research and I am very willing to help you fill our your own branch.

But you will have to furnish me legal proof to add to our branch by direct descent. This may take quite a bit of doing since we have no Charles, Jane or any of the H’s you told me of over the phone. I hope you succeed. With so many children you should tie in somewhere but I don’t believe it will be through this branch for it requires a marriage to a member of the Marmaduke Blackstones to be able to claim direct descent from the Royal Families.

Mr. Lester G Pine, for several years an Editor of Burke’s Peerage has examined my papers and approved my accuracy. He also gave my descent from William, the Conqueror as an example of Americans descendants in a book he published.

Please be very careful of my papers and return as soon as possible. My children are after me to get the book completed and I shall need them to refresh my memory. Any “remarks” you want to make please make on separate papers of your own. These I send have been re-worked several times and probably will be again but these are the last typed.

Frances Cummins